By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Alligator Alcatraz
Great news! Florida is building an “Alligator Alcatraz” for illegal immigrants in the Everglades ringed by gators, pythons and mosquitoes.
Send me your tired, your poor and ICE will detain them in trailers, tents and tropical heat for as long as it takes to try or fry them, whichever’s first.
“We don’t need to build a lot of brick and mortar there,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said of the site, a mid-swamp air strip. “And thankfully, Mother Nature does a lot on the perimeter.
“There’s really nowhere to go. If you’re housed there, if you’re detained there, there’s no way in, now way out,” he said.
“No one’s going anywhere,” agreed Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis, presumably about Alligator Alley although it could also be said of his 2024 presidential bid.
Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost called the center’s use of alligators as a security measure “a cruel spectacle.”
“Donald Trump, his Administration and his enablers have made one thing brutally clear,” he said. “They intend to use the power of government to kidnap, brutalize, starve and harm every single immigrant they can — because they have a deep disdain for immigrants and are using them to scapegoat the serious issues facing working people.” Elon Musk is an immigrant, for example.
Trump’s homeland security head Kristi Noem said the work will be largely funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known for helping Americans survive natural disasters. As for manmade ones, we’re on our own.
Managing the facility will cost $245 per bed per day, or approximately $450 million a year, one U.S. official said.
Florida is moving forward with construction “at turbo speed” Noem said, over objections by Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, local activists and Native American tribal leaders, who consider the land sacred.
Bully, I say. Never mind that my Irish ancestors too were immigrants. They assimilated, becoming crooked cops, machine politicians and/or Kennedys. Plus at least the Fed isn’t using bears.
When I was growing up, I thought the ‘glades were a paradise, in the same state as Mar-a-Lago with mild winters, golf and gold-plated toilets everywhere.
The TV series “Gentle Ben,” about a boy’s friendship with a giant bear, was set there. Who knew the show was based on a novel set in Alaska, where bears really live?
I pictured riding with my dad through the swamps on an airboat, falling off and a 700-lb. bruin swimming out to save me from evil immigrants, jaws of an alligator or both.
The show in its first year, 1967, reached No. 2 in the Neilsen ratings, but was canceled two years later. Although some praised “Ben” for its family values and respect for nature, PTA magazine criticized it for depicting children feeding and playing with bears.
“How CBS could permit a program with a black bear — not a cub, but a gigantic adult bear — is beyond our comprehension,” it said.
Chief National Park Service officer John Hast called “Ben” “the worst thing that ever happened to us.
“People see this big lovable bear on television,” he said, “and when they see a bear in the park, I guess they think it’s the same one. They don’t realize how wrong they are until they’re bleeding.”
I was thinking of driving to Alligator Alcatraz to join Trump and friends building it, a la Jimmy Carter with Habitat for Humanity, when I remembered Jeff Bezos’s wedding in Venice was that weekend.
Oprah, the Kardashians, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio … everyone who is anyone would be there. I should too.
I kept waiting for Jeff to ping me his invitation — after all, Amazon never forgets when I owe them money— but with a $56 million wedding to manage, he must have become too busy.
Besides, I couldn’t afford a round-trip flight, much less a room that would cost at least $245 a night.
